


Neon is All We Have

by DasWarSchonKaputt



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, And we need more femslash generally, Background Relationships, Because I can, F/F, Fem!Jeff is a supervillain waiting to happen, Fem!Nick is a Stony shipper, Female-Centric, Inspired by Art, Lesbian Character, Referenced Past Kurt/Male Character, Rule 63, This fic ATE my life, heed the warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 08:58:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3243848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DasWarSchonKaputt/pseuds/DasWarSchonKaputt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Kurt Hummel goes from nobody, to the local lesbo, to a student at Dalton Academy for Girls, to the girlfriend of Blaine Anderson. Girl!Klaine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neon is All We Have

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: some pretty nasty stuff goes down, associated with Karofsky: forced ‘outing’, allusions to threats of sexual violence, sexual assault (non-consensual kiss), sexual harassment. See end notes for more detailed warnings.
> 
> **Genderbent Characters**  
>  Kurt Hummel = Katherine “Kurt” Hummel  
> Blaine Devon Anderson = Blaine Delilah Anderson  
> Wesley Montgomery = Juliet “Wes” Wesley  
> David Thompson = Davina Thompson  
> Nick Duval = Nicki Duval  
> Jeff Sterling = Jess Sterling  
> Thad Harwood = Thalia Harwood
> 
> This was inspired by [this](http://zephyrianboom.tumblr.com/image/12038964487) beautiful piece of artwork.

Kurt is born into the world fighting. When she’s young and still enamoured with everything around her, it’s not so much about who the punches are thrown at, it’s just that she’s the one throwing them.

As she grows, though, and loses her mother, and has to cling to her father to keep him by her side, she learns how to hold her fists back. She unearths the ways in which she can smooth out her palms, and press them to her sides.

She thinks it’s a sign of maturity, that she knows when not to throw punches.

It’s when she’s sixteen, though, that she realises she’s forgotten how to.

**I  
KURT HUMMELS LEZBO**

If Kurt had known that turning Dave down was going to end like this, maybe she would have done it differently. As it is, though, she didn’t, and now she’s plus one graffiti’d locker and –for the first time in her high school career – the subject of the school’s rumour mill.

The words, _KURT HUMMELS LEZBO_ , stare back at her, grammatical errors silently daring her to disapprove of them, as she tries to figure out what happens now. If she had any faith whatsoever in the system, she’d probably take this to Principal Figgins – or is Coach Sylvester in charge now? Kurt thinks she may have heard something like that in the locker room a few days ago – and make a complaint. Years of ruined clothes and slushies to the face will disillusion you, though, and Kurt’s pretty sure the response will be directions to the nearest janitor’s closet so she can clean off the graffiti herself.

It could be worse, she supposes. At least she got around to telling her dad before the shit hit the fan, and she’s maybe eighty per-cent certain that Glee club won’t care, so there’s that.

Across the hallway, Santana Lopez catches her gaze.

Santana and Kurt have never been particularly close – Kurt’s brief stint on the Cheerio’s last year not withstanding – and the nicest things they’ve ever said to one another are, _ignoring the flat-chest, the terrible fashion sense, and your frankly disturbing obsession with hair wax, you’re not actually ugly, Hummel,_ and, _uh, thank you, I think,_ respectively.

But now, Santana’s staring at her, like…

Like nothing.

This is just like the Mercedes thing last year. Kurt really needs to learn to stop reading into things too much.

\--

Mercedes Jones was a force of nature in and of herself; the moment Kurt saw her that first glee meeting, she was utterly enamoured. Friendship came naturally between them, and the lies came to Kurt just as easily.

_A crush on Finn_ , she remembers telling Mercedes, and Mercedes had just nodded like it was perfectly normal. It was.

She kept telling herself not to read too much into their friendship, but Kurt had never been good at taking her own advice. Kurt thinks that she maybe would have pushed the boundaries further, and ruined something – she’s good at ruining things, has always been, ever since she ripped the dress Mom sewed for her when she was four – but around about the time Kurt was starting to work up the courage to say something, she found Quinn crying in her car.

And then, well, a teenage pregnancy can put things into perspective.

Kurt chose to keep her mouth shut and tell another lie with a smile.

She’s still not sure if it is the smartest, or the stupidest thing she has ever done.

\--

On the grand scale of awkward family dinners, today’s is barely even a six. (At ten is the day that Burt told her that her mom wasn’t going to live to see her turn nine, and at eight is the evening when Burt tried to bring up bra-shopping and she had to inform him that she wasn’t sure they made bras small enough for her.) That said, it’s not relaxed – not even in the slightest – and Finn almost chokes on his cauliflower when Kurt asks him to pass her the salt.

Burt frowns at this, but waits until they’re about halfway through to bring it up. “So,” he says, setting his knife and fork down, face stern. “Are you two going to let me in on what’s going on?”

Finn chokes again, this time on his water. Kurt automatically reaches out a hand to pat him on the back, but Finn flinches away from the contact. Retracting her hand, Kurt tries to suppress the urge to shrink on herself, because isn’t that just the way things are?

Burt watches the exchange with narrowed eyes. Kurt can see the pinch in his brows, the tightening of his lips, and knows he’s stewing on his words, waiting until they’re going to be most effective before he throws them out.

Kurt cuts him off before he can open his mouth. “It’s no big deal, Dad,” she lies smoothly. “Just, you know, school stuff.”

“School stuff,” Burt repeats flatly. He is not convinced.

Kurt goes for a blasé shrug. It’s a little half-hearted. “Yeah, you know, bullies,” she says, just as Finn manages to clear his airway enough to contribute, “Everyone at school is saying Kurt’s a lesbian.”

It’s almost comical, really, the way that Carole’s eyes bug out as she chokes on her mouthful of mashed potato. Maybe an inability to properly swallow is a Hudson thing, Kurt muses.

Eyes watering, and after a mouthful of water, Carole manages a strangled, “Are you sure that’s what you meant to say, Finn?”

Kurt cuts off any response that Finn may have made with a swift kick to the shin. He yelps – and Kurt thinks, _good_ – but it’s too late for any kind of pre-emptive damage control. Burt is giving Kurt his Concerned Father Look (patent pending).

“You want to elaborate on that, Kurt?” Burt asks her.

Kurt sighs. “Look, Dad, it’s nothing,” she lets her eyes flicker over to Finn, who for all intents and purposes, still thinks she’s straight. “I turned down a football player, he decided to spread shit. Can we leave it alone now?”

“For now,” Burt agrees, but there’s a firm air of _later_ to his speech. Fabulous, Kurt thinks. Another awkward conversation. Maybe they’ll be able to knock the bra incident off its pedestal.

\--

School the next day is hell. It doesn’t get much better the day after that. Thursday is just as bad as Monday through Wednesday. By Friday, Kurt has divided the school up into three groups, the last of which is depressingly small:

Group one: people who have heard the rumour, think she’s a lesbian, and have decided this is just cause to make her life hell.

Group two: the people who have heard the rumour, don’t believe it, and have decided that she is still not worth their time.

And, lastly, group three: people who have heard the rumour, think she’s a lesbian, and don’t care.

Mercedes was originally a loyal member of group two, before Kurt pulled her aside to give her the ‘the rumours are true’ talk, and she shifted into group three, endless ‘are you sure you’re sure????’ texts aside. Rachel is mostly group three, but Kurt is thinking about moving her to group one out of spite, and also because her constant offers of her dads’ number for some kind of gay-mentoring thing are getting old. Fast.

The throwers of her ‘anonymous’ notes in class – Azimio, she has been working with you in French for _two years_ ; she knows your handwriting – are all group one, and don’t look like they’re going to be moved out of it any time soon. Puck is also group one, but that’s mostly because the threesome thing wasn’t funny the first time, and it’s most certainly not funny now, okay?

Sue Sylvester – who, Kurt can now confirm, is actually the principal; she found out when she was sent to the office for throwing notes back at Azimio in class – is unapologetically group three, but that’s mostly because she treats everyone with equal disdain, lesbianism or no.

Mr. Schue is group three, but only because Kurt finds his vocabulary mishaps funny, not offensive. (“Okay, guys, today we’re going to be looking at lesbian songs— _love songs_ , love songs, oh my God, I am so sorry.”)

Santana is group one, if the glares and shitty remarks in Glee are anything to go by.

All in all, Kurt feels like it’s not that much worse than she imagined, but then again, that would be very difficult to achieve.

\--

For as long as she can remember, people have tried to attribute Kurt’s somewhat complicated relationship with gender to the lack of a feminine influence in her life, but that’s not exactly the case. Kurt started refusing to answer to ‘Katherine’ when she was four – her mom still very much alive – and mucking around in her dad’s garage and turning her nose up at dresses shortly afterwards.

That doesn’t mean she’s not a girl. She can like soccer and cars and short hair and still be a girl; they’re just _things._

Kurt sometimes thinks that her mom must have prepped her dad for the wrong talk before she died, because all Burt said when she came out was, “Oh,” and then, “So, you’re, you know, a girl that likes other girls?”

Kurt had given Burt this strange look, and said, “Yeah, Dad, that’s kind of what gay means.”

And then Burt hugged her, told her he was proud of her, and they curled up on the couch to watch Mary Poppins _._ (Julie Andrews is a goddess, shut _up_.)

So, Kurt started high school with hair cropped short – styled into an oblivion, seriously, Santana, she’s not _completely_ incompetent when it comes to her appearance – and band shirts and tight jeans and combat boots. The fact that she wears ratty clothes and doesn’t bother with make-up doesn’t mean that she hates fashion – she probably reads Vogue more often than the entire female population of McKinley put together – and the fact that she enjoys watching football doesn’t mean she’s not down for a Broadway marathon when she has time.

The fact that she has more in common with the Glee guys than the girls doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when Rachel bluntly suggests she be lumped in with them in the latest boys vs. girls competition that Mr. Schue has dreamt up.

“Are you serious?” Kurt chokes out.

“It’s nothing personal,” Rachel informs her blithely. “It’s just that your register is kind of low for what I had in mind.”

Kurt isn’t sure what to say to that, except, “Rachel, you and I sung Defying Gravity last year. I’m sure whatever you’re planning is _well_ within my range.”

Mr. Schuester chooses that moment to intervene, all smarm and hair-gel. “Is there a problem, girls?”

Rachel gives Kurt a dead stare. After the week she’s had, she’s really not too eager to get into it with Rachel, and she suspects that Rachel knows that. “No problem, Mr. Schue,” Kurt relents. “I’m just going to go sing with the guys if that’s okay?”

Mr. Schue frowns confusedly. “I’m not sure if that’s really what I—”

“Thanks, Mr. Schue,” Kurt cuts him off.

\--

The boys are somehow even less eager to have her on their team. As Puck starts to talk to her about _breasts_ – seriously, of all the things they had in common, her attraction to girls is what he chooses to try and bond over? – Kurt begins to wish she had chosen the cat fight with Rachel instead.

“So, like,” Puck’s saying, “this girl was you know, full-on—”

“Can we talk about music, please?” Kurt tries.

“—And I’m gonna be honest with you, I was sort of worried about suffocation at the start—”

“Clearly not,” Kurt mutters.

Puck breaks off in the middle of his tale to give her a challenging look. “If you’re really so concerned about sectionals, why don’t you go spy on the Garglers?”

“Warblers,” Kurt corrects. “And, honestly? Have any of you ever actually listened to Rachel when she rants about show choir?” Okay, she will freely admit that that was a stupid question. “Spying on the opposition is against the rules, dumbass.”

“Didn’t stop Jesse,” Mike pipes up. Kurt kind of wants to hit him on the head.

“I was just sayin’, if we’re making you uncomfortable, you can go elsewhere,” Puck points out. “It’s not like we’re keeping you here.”

“Finn, seriously,” Kurt says, turning to her step-brother. Finn says nothing. Kurt’s going to guess that he’s still pissed she didn’t actually tell him that it was all true.

“I don’t know what you’re so worked up about anyway,” Puck goes on. “I mean, short skirts, private school – it’s practically a lesbian porno waiting to happen.” His grin turns shifts into a leer. “If you make any _friends_ , I’d totally be down for getting to know you two better.”

Kurt stands. “Screw you, Puck,” she spits, and walks out.

\--

Kurt tears into her room, so insufferably _angry_ at it all, furious over nothing, and she just wants to _hurt._ She wants to break something, bend it out of shape, feel it ruined beneath her palms, revel in destruction.

There was a time after her mom died when Kurt couldn’t make herself cry, no matter how hard she tried to force the tears. She used to lay awake in bed at night, eyes too dry, and wonder what it would take to make her snap – what her hair-trigger would be, the one thing that would drive her over the edge, and make the tears come.

She never thought it would be this.

She never thought it would be herself.

Drowning out the noise of her sobs in music works for about as long as it takes for her iPod to start bleating out, “ _I kissed a girl and I liked it_ —”

She throws a shoe at it. It stops. It’s probably broken and she can’t bring herself to care.

Kurt eventually settles for tearing apart her closet, vision blurred, clothes thrown across the room with disdain. She rips into old garments, feels some sort of catharsis when the fabric screeches into two. By the time she’s two hours in, her eyes are dry and her breaths even, and she feels better, superficially at least.

Wedged at the back of her closet, buried under countless graphic T’s and pairs of too-small jeans, she finds an old blouse that she and her dad had bought for whenever she needed to attend weddings and parties. It’s in good condition – Kurt takes care of her things – and fitted in a way that would probably hide her pitifully flat chest. Kurt holds it up against herself, and looks at herself in the mirror.

God, she looks like a mess.

It’s after that that she finds a surprisingly well-sized navy blazer, and she pauses, holding it in her palms.

Huh, she thinks, then boots up her computer to Google, _Dalton Academy for Girls._

\--

Dalton is another world in and of itself, a sheltered haven that is sequestered away from Westerville by the vast expanses of the school grounds. As she drives down the tree-lined drive, she feels like she should maybe have some sort of guidebook with her, and be checking off a list of rooms that she needs to visit. (That’s what you do at stately homes, isn’t it? Kurt wouldn’t really know; that was always something she and Mom did together.)

Kurt stands out in Dalton, she soon discovers. Her mock-up of the uniform is rather pitiful, all in all, and she supposes she should be glad that the girl, Blaine, she stopped on the steps – _gorgeous_ springs to mind, with luscious dark brown curls, and hazel eyes, and _oh my God, Kurt, stop it_ – was kind enough to humour her for as long as she did.

The Warblers are—breath-taking, actually.

Kurt’s a believer in moments. She thinks that there are eventualities and potentialities out there that can just be spread out for what feels like forever, and in those seconds stretched to oblivion, something happens inside you, inside your mind, and you think, _Oh._

Standing there, in her ill-fitting skirt – she had to steal one of her mom’s to complete the look, but Kurt is starting to wonder why she bothered – Blaine singing hard and with such _sincerity_ , that is a moment for Kurt. Something breaks and mends and breaks again within Kurt at that time, and if she believed in love at first sight…

That’s a stupid though, though.

The elation only lasts so long. As soon as the Warblers are finished with their number – and how is it possible that Blaine made her like Katy Perry again? – she’s accosted by two girls.

The taller of the two, with bobbed black hair and distinctly Asian features, sticks out her hand. “I’m Juliet Wesley,” she says, and Kurt feels something lodge in her throat. “Honestly, though, I’d rather you just call me Wes. This is Davina.” She throws a loose hand out at her companion, a black girl with hair so short, Kurt almost thought she was bald at a first glance.

“I think we need to have a chat,” Wes goes on to say, and Kurt feels her stomach drop out, straight down through her feet.

Wes gestures for her to follow, and suddenly, Kurt’s being swept away through a maze of corridors to what she presumes is her grizzly end. Situation after situation flies through her head on the journey, all accompanied by the fact that these girls are _rich_ – they probably won’t even need to beat her up themselves, probably have henchmen on speed-dial or something – and they may never find her body.

Her grizzly end, however, turns out to be taking place in a … coffee shop?

Davina pushes her into one of the rickety seats and walks across the shop to order – “I’m going to get you a mocha,” says Wes. “You look like a mocha kind of girl.” – but all Kurt can think is, _what the hell is going on?_

They return with the coffees a couple of minutes later, and then, Wes says, “So, where did you get your jacket?”

Kurt is very glad she hasn’t taken a sip of her mocha yet; she most definitely does not want to develop Finn and Carole’s propensity for choking on things, especially not piping hot coffee. “What?”

Davina frowns at her. “Seriously?” she asks. “You’re not honestly going to try and tell us you got it from the school uniform shop, are you? It’s far too well tailored for that – I mean, have you seen these things?” Davina tugs on her blazer disdainfully.

“You should see the summer dresses,” Wes adds. “Belted sacks, I’m telling you this now.”

“They’re also really expensive,” Davina continues on from Wes. “I thought I was going to have to cut into my college fund when I had my growth spurt sophomore year.”

And then – that moment – after being given an exclusive look into the Dalton uniform that she probably would have appreciated a few hours earlier, that is when Blaine walks in.

And Kurt kind of forgets to breathe.

Blaine drops in next to Wes and Davina, and promptly steals Davina’s latte. “You would not believe what Mr. H just said to me, guys – how is he not on a register?”

Wes clears her throat daintily and nods in Kurt’s direction.

Blaine’s eyes fix on Kurt and widen. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, okay, hi. Kurt, right?”

_Yes_ , Kurt wants to say. _You just sang half a love song towards me, so I do hope you remember my name._

Kurt moves to say all that, but the words falter in her throat, get stuck beneath her tongue, and suddenly Blaine’s entire face softens.

“Hey, would you guys mind leaving us to chat alone for a bit?” Blaine asks Wes and Davina, and Kurt thinks, _okay, this is it._

She’s tensing for the inevitable blow, a little wide-eyed at the idea that Blaine’s going to do this in front of everyone in the coffee shop – _she can probably buy off the witnesses_ , a dark part of Kurt’s brain whispers, and Kurt thinks that the dark part should _shut up_ – when Blaine reaches across and takes her hand.

“Hey,” she says. “You alright? You kind of look like you’re about to pass out.”

Wes and Davina are nowhere in sight. Kurt feels like she’s going to throw up.

“I’m—” she stumbles over the word _fine._ “Can we just get this over quickly?” she asks instead.

Blaine’s brow crinkles in confusion, and hell if it isn’t the most adorable thing Kurt’s ever seen. “Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

_Yes,_ Kurt wants to say. _I need to be driving away from here, uninjured and unharmed and preferably soon so my dad doesn’t file a missing persons report._ Instead, she says, “It’s really nice of you to take me out for coffee before beating me up, but the anticipation is kind of killing me—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Blaine interrupts. “Beating you up? Why would we do that?”

“Because I was spying on your show choir, and you guys kind of seem a bit like the mob, and seriously, have you seen my arms, you could totally take me—”

“Okay, calm down,” Blaine tells her. “I’m not going to beat you up. Seriously. And as for the spying thing, I was kind of guessing that there’s something a bit more to this than _show choir_.”

Blaine says the words _show choir_ as if she can’t contemplate it ever being a big enough deal to beat someone up over; Kurt isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

“Look,” Blaine goes on, smiling in a way that reaches her eyes. “I’m not going to beat you up. I just thought you could use someone to talk to.”

It’s another _oh_ moment for Kurt. _Oh_ , she thinks, and then realises that it’s the first time anyone’s made that offer since she was outed at school. She isn’t sure what to think of that. (Pathetic, she kind of wants to say. Depressing. Terrifying.)

Kurt takes a deep breath, thinks, _what the hell_ , and says, “I’m the only out kid at my school.”

“Oh,” Blaine says. “I was kind of hoping it wasn’t that.”

Kurt’s face falls.

“Oh my God, I didn’t mean it like that,” Blaine rushes out immediately. “Just—that sucks. I was kind of hoping that you were just going to say something like, ‘My cat died,’ and I could sort of go, ‘Oh man, that’s awful, have a hug,’ and then everything would be sorted. No, um, uh, me too.”

“Your cat died?”

“What? No,” Blaine says. “I’m gay.”

_Oh, but you—_

_Oh, but I—_

_Oh._

“Oh,” Kurt manages. “So, Dalton…”

Blaine laughs then, and her entire body shakes with the rhythm. “I’m sorry,” she gets out, “we just get that so much.” She shakes her head. “No, Dalton’s not a gay school. Unfortunately.” There’s a brief moment of realisation that passes across Blaine’s face. “Oh, not that I’d like, _do_ Wes or Davina, or anything, but—”

Kurt decides to take mercy on Blaine, who should probably not be left in control of her own mouth for extended periods of time. “You’re kind of rambling,” she points out, and takes a sip of her mocha.

Blaine grimaces. “I am, aren’t I?” She shakes her head. “I had this plan, I’ll have you know. I was going to come in here and be all, ‘Wanna talk about whatever’s bothering you?’ and totally sweep you off your feet as this super suave and down-with-it, and you’re totally laughing at me, aren’t you?”

Kurt tries – and fails – to smother a smile. “That would be terribly rude,” she says.

Blaine sighs. “It’s just, I remember what it was like back when I was in public school,” she says. “It was awful, and I was alone, and I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what I did.”

“What happened?” Kurt asks.

Blaine shrugs. “A couple of girls took issue with me and cornered me in the bathroom with a pair of scissors. After that, my parents freaked and transferred me to Dalton.”

That … that’s awful. Kurt can’t even imagine what must have happened in that bathroom, and can barely comprehend Blaine’s blasé attitude towards the event. It’s awful, but it’s _different._

When someone comes at you with scissors, there are scars. Maybe not on you, but on your clothes, and you can take those scars, take that proof, and say, _here, look at what they did_. When it’s just words, just graffiti, just offers for threesomes, just a B minus on a French paper because the teacher’s a raging homophobe, it’s … harder to justify doing more.

So, Kurt doesn’t say that. Instead, she says, “A guy asked me out. I told him no. Next thing I know, someone’s written a message on my locker to make sure that I know I’m a ‘LEZBO’ – spelled with a ‘z’.”

“Ouch,” Blaine says. “Both at the spelling, and the—well, just, ouch.” She sighs. “This guy—”

“Dave.”

“—Dave, did he make it up, and just happen to hit jackpot, or..?”

That’s probably what makes Kurt feel stupidest about this mess, if she’s honest. Because she thought it would be _simpler_ , if she just came out and said it to Dave. Because she thought that Dave would accept it on face value, and because he’d been nothing but sweet, keep it to himself.

“What,” Kurt asks bitterly, “so I just deserve it, then? Because I _told_ someone?”

“No,” Blaine rushes to say, but Kurt is already too far gone.

“Because I don’t know, Blaine, but I just _thought_ —and I know it was stupid—but I just thought he wouldn’t leave me alone unless I gave him a reason, unless I—it was stupid, I know—”

“You don’t owe anybody _anything_ for saying no, Kurt,” Blaine cuts in forcefully.

“I know that,” Kurt agrees, the fight draining out of her. “But sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.”

\--

At school the next day, Dave approaches her at her locker and apologises. He rubs the back of his head, tells her he made a mistake – “I only told ‘Z, Kurt; I had no idea he was going to tell everyone.” – and offers to buy her a coffee to try and make up for it.

She – stupidly, foolishly, _You don’t owe anybody anything for saying no, Kurt_ – says yes.

Kurt has lived through enough of her personal disasters to know that she doesn’t make smart choices.

This is just another one of those.

Coffee with Dave was never going to end well – how could it? – but she had to _try_. And maybe, she thinks as she wraps herself up in a scarf and drives to the Lima Bean, maybe, just maybe, this is the start of the mythical ‘better’ of which she has heard so much. Maybe it isn’t about owing anything to Dave. Maybe it’s about owing something to herself.

Maybe she’s just fooling herself.

(She’s just fooling herself.)

As she’s getting out of her Navigator, her phone buzzes.

_Courage, Kurt_ , the text on her phone reads as she enters the Lima Bean, and it’s enough to put a smile on her face when she meets Dave’s eye. She nods at him, once, and walks over to buy herself a mocha – she normally gets straight up coffee, but, Wes was kind of right; she’s a mocha girl – and then sits down opposite him.

Dave has a cup of what he probably thinks is the manliest drink on the menu in front of him – something that is as inedible as it is strong – but he’s not drinking it. He’s just … staring.

It’s invasive, and it makes Kurt feel like she should be vibrating out of her own skin. She wishes he’d just look somewhere else, and wonders if she stares pointedly enough at something, he’ll follow her lead.

He doesn’t.

Each passing second feels like he’s stripping her of another attribute that makes her human, slowly turning her into a statue, then—

And then he kisses her.

It’s—

—awful. Vile. And so much worse than the stares, and why is he doing this, and she should run, or scream, or hit him, and please, just stop, just let me breathe, just move, oh God, oh God, oh God—

—Run, run, why aren’t you running—

— _I have never hated myself more than I do now_ —

—Somebody get him off me, somebody help, oh God—

Dave pulls back, and his breath is brushing against Kurt’s cheek and everything in her rebels against it. She can feel her lunch bubbling in her stomach, threatening to push past her oesophagus, and she forces it back down.

He dives in for another kiss.

Kurt reacts this time, hands jumping forward immediately, knocking her still piping-hot mocha straight into Dave’s lap. He yelps, leaps back, and Kurt doesn’t hesitate. She runs.

Parking lot. Navigator. Freeway. Home. Shower. _Blaine._

Her hair is still damp when she finally dials Blaine on her phone. She gets as far as Blaine’s cheerful, “ _Hello, 007,_ ” before she bursts into tears.

“ _Hey, hey, hey, what’s wrong? C’mon, you can tell me – I’m not about to judge, remember?_ ”

Kurt is struck by a sudden stab of hysteria. “My cat just died,” she says, and wants to laugh.

She cries instead.

\--

The weird thing about it all is that she expects some kind of massive blow-up from The Kiss, as she’s taken to calling it – because Incident of Sexual Assault in a Coffee Shop is just a bit too much of a mouthful, and a bit too real – but life just … goes on. Glee is barely bearable each day, but that’s not exactly new, and Puck is still lecherous and gross, but then again, neither is that.

And, okay, she may be making a bit too much of an effort to avoid Karofksy – not Dave, not anymore – in the corridors, including taking a route twice as long as her regular one to fifth period chem, but that’s … fine. It’s fine. She’s still surviving.

There’s a bit of a close encounter during lunch, when she sees Karofsky and his goons rounding a corner, and she has to duck into the girls locker room to stay out of his sight, but that’s—

Holy mother of God, _is that Santana?_

Pressed up against the lockers, well and truly tangled in each other, are Santana, and another cheerleader. It takes Kurt a moment to place the other cheerleader as Brittany from Glee, and another moment for the fact that _they have their tongues down each other’s throats_ to sink in.

“Oh. My. God.” The words are out of Kurt’s mouth before she can think twice.

Santana freezes, then shoves off Brittany as if she’s been burnt. She scrambles towards Kurt, lips curling as she snarls, “You tell anyone, Hummel, and I’ll make your life _hell_ , I swear I will—”

Kurt doesn’t mean to, but she can’t stop herself. “What?” she chokes out. “Like people aren’t already?”

Santana crowds in closer to her. “I keep razor blades in my hair,” she whispers harshly. It manages to be a threat and a promise all in one.

Then, Santana grabs her bag, then Brittany – who only looks confused – and stalks out of the room.

Just then, Kurt’s phone buzzes with a text. She looks down.

_Here if you need to talk,_ it says.

Kurt doesn’t think twice about hitting dial.

\--

Dave corners Kurt after lunch that day. She ends the encounter on the verge of a panic attack, words like, “ _I don’t need your permission, Kurt_ ,” and, “ _You’re so beautiful_ ,” rattling around in her head until she’s sprinting to the bathroom and losing the contents of her stomach in the nearest toilet.

Her jeans are trashed from kneeling on the bathroom floor. It’s probably the most messed up thing ever that _that_ is the realisation that makes her think, _this has to stop._

 

**II  
This is how I fall in love with you.**

Monday

If Kurt had to describe Dalton in a word, she’d probably pick _intimidating._ Indeed, it’s hard not to look up at the school building, standing proud over acres of manicured lawn in red brick, and feel smaller than you are. Even in the assigned uniform – badly cut and unflattering though it may be – Kurt doesn’t feel like she belongs. She feels like an imposter, and keeps waiting for someone to call her out, to tell her that she’s fooling no-one, and she can stop playing pretend.

It’s all alien to her, from the girls, to the world they come from, to the strange bursts of slang she hears thrown about.

But Kurt Hummel is used to looking out over a crowd of people and seeing an army instead. So she straightens her tie, tugs down on the hem of her skirt, and she goes to war.

War at Dalton is different, though. Here the battles aren’t fought ice-cold slushies and dips in the toilet bowl; they’re thought with looks and body language and posture. They’re fought by dainty girls with perfect make-up and the souls of ferocious beasts.

It’s the chess game of the privileged, and Kurt doesn’t know what she’s doing in the middle of it.

There are moments of blind shock in her first day, from the way that their physics teacher responds to a challenge on his definition of a relationship – “Oh, great point, Imogen. Yes, Imogen’s right; I meant displacement, not distance. Everyone correct that in their notes.” – to the sheer volume of homework that is piled on top of her with each succeeding lesson – “Prep, Kurt,” Blaine laughs when she makes a remark. “We can it prep here.”

And—Blaine.

Blaine at Dalton is somehow exactly what Kurt expected and nothing like that at all. Blaine sweeps through the halls at Dalton, effortlessly in control and so seamlessly at ease that Kurt can only look on in envy. She can charm anyone with a single smile, and practically bounces as she walks.

She’s everything that Kurt wishes she could be, but never wants to try and achieve.

\--

At the end of her first day, an eight-hour monstrosity stretching from eight-fifteen to twenty past four, all Kurt wants to do is crash somewhere quiet and listen to her iPod. Maybe call her dad, but only because she knows he must be going out of his mind with worry over her schooling situation.

She can’t do that, though, because she has a meeting with the guidance counsellor.

Maybe it’s because Miss Pillsbury was hopelessly useless when it counted – it’s because Miss Pillsbury was hopelessly useless when it counted – but Kurt doesn’t have such a great appreciation for high school guidance counsellors. Buffy Summers got a job as one in _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ without ever completing a college degree, so it’s not like it’s _hard_ to get the job, is it?

When she arrives outside Dalton’s guidance counsellor’s office and reads the name on the door – _Poppy Garnett PhD_ – she is forced to reconsider.

Dr Garnett’s office is clearly designed to be homely, Kurt thinks as she looks over the pale paintjob and the decorative cushions, but all of it sets Kurt on edge. The woman herself is gorgeous, mixed-race with curly black hair and very white teeth, and she organises some files on her desk for a couple of seconds before so much as introducing herself.

Kurt cuts off the introduction before it has left her mouth. “Why do people do that?” she asks. “The paper shuffling thing? Is it supposed to make you seem busy, or something?”

Dr Garnett gives Kurt a small smile. “I do it so that students have a few moments to prepare themselves. They tend to appreciate it.” She runs a rough hand through her hair. “So, Katherine, I’m—”

“Kurt,” Kurt says immediately.

“Actually, my name is Poppy, but I’ve heard worse guesses,” Dr Garnett says.

“No,” Kurt says, speaking slowly. “My name is Kurt. Not Katherine.”

Dr Garnett blinks – actually _blinks_ – before shuffling some more files on her desk. “You’re, uh, what’s the word – genderqueer?”

It’s actually a word that Kurt has heard before – even played around with a bit in her early teens before deciding it didn’t fit – and she reacts with a simple shake of her head. Dr Garnett seems to take this in stride and, thankfully, doesn’t push the issue.

“I am gay, though,” Kurt tells her. “So if Dalton needs diversity points or whatever…” She shrugs.

“I’ll be sure to inform the school board,” Dr Garnett says dryly. “Okay, so this was your first day, right? How are you liking things?”

“Fine,” Kurt says shortly.

Dr Garnett has this look on her face like she was expecting more than that, but Kurt is stubbornly silent on the subject.

“It’s probably very different from your old school,” Dr Garnett says by way of a prompt, and that’s enough to—

_I don’t need your permission, Kurt._

“Yes,” Kurt grits out. “It’s different.”

\--

The rest of the meeting goes in a similar fashion to that of pulling out your fingernails. It’s slow, painful, and ultimately pointless.

Kurt has a follow-up scheduled for Wednesday lunch. She decides the moment she is out of the door not to go.

\--

Kurt returns to her dorm room, ready to collapse. Her roommate, Nicki Duval, someone so freakishly genuine Kurt thinks it must be a trick, is there already, waiting for her.

When Kurt had introduced herself, Nicki had nodded like she’d just slotted a last puzzle-piece into a picture. “Ah,” she had said. “ _You’re_ Kurt.”

Kurt had given her an inscrutable look. “I just told you that.”

Now, Nicki sits cross-legged on her bed, one pen tucked behind her ear, the other held between her teeth. She looks up at Kurt, and grins, slamming her book shut. “Hey, how was the guidance counsellor?” she asks. “I’m about to go grab some dinner – you wanna come, maybe meet some of my friends?”

It’s a sensible suggestion, but Kurt isn’t sure she’s going to be able to eat much of anything tonight. “Maybe later,” she says with a shrug.

Nicki is seemingly unaffected by her refusal. “Whatever you want,” she says. “See you around Kurt.”

\--

Tuesday

“Ta-dah!” Blaine says gleefully as she hands Kurt a slip of paper.

Kurt takes the paper with one hand and uses the other to tug down on her skirt. “What’s this?” she asks. “Warbler audition?”

Blaine grins. “Yep,” she says, popping the ‘p’. “I mean, the Warblers don’t normally do auditions this late in the semester, so you’re pretty lucky you’re BFFs with the lead soloist.”

Kurt feels her tongue go dry in her mouth. “That’s—”

It’s not that Kurt has lost her love of singing, because she _hasn’t._ Singing is one of the few ties Kurt still has to her mom that don’t make her tear up just thinking about them, but Dalton is … overwhelming. Last night, Kurt was too exhausted to even pick up a pencil, and she already has more homework than she used to get in a week at McKinley. Show choir is nothing if not time-consuming, and the Warblers are an _a cappella_ choir; Kurt doesn’t know how she’ll have time.

But—

Kurt can’t figure out how she’s supposed to say no to Blaine. So she doesn’t.

“That’s great, thanks Blaine,” Kurt says.

Blaine’s answering smile is shining.

\--

Kurt bombs her audition.

It’s probably the worst performance she’s given in her life, including the time in third grade where she got stage fright so bad that she puked on her teacher’s shoes before going onto stage and delivering her lines. She’d had to speak through the bitter taste of vomit with a smile on her face, and this is _worse_ than that.

The words get stuck in her throat, she misses notes, and she bolts out halfway through the final verse, humiliated and ashamed.

She sings. It’s what she does. She sings and she sings well. It’s one of the few effortless things left in her life.

And somehow she’s managed to fuck that up too.

\--

Kurt wonders how these girls do it – put on this skirt and this shirt and this blazer and walk out there like it’s armour, and not cheap polyester – and wonders how they don’t go out of their minds at all of it. The solace of her dorm room is a godsend, and Kurt takes the time to strip away the uniform, layer by layer, until she’s standing in her underwear, staring herself up and down.

_You’re so beautiful._

She wonders what he saw in her. She wonders what it was about her that pushed him over the edge, made him crowd her against the lockers—

No.

Just—no.

Whatever it was, it didn’t come from her. If it did—she’ll drive herself insane like this.

\--

Nicki returns from Warbler rehearsal too soon. She enters the room hesitantly, and opens her mouth to ask—something, but Kurt is faster.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says flatly.

“Kurt,” Nicki tries.

“Just leave me alone,” she mumbles, and grabs a towel to go shower.

\--

Wednesday

It doesn’t take long for Blaine’s hovering to become oppressive. Maybe it’s because Kurt is introverted by nature, but there’s only so much human contact she can take before she feels herself wound tight, ready to snap at barely a moment’s notice.

(Being alone is almost as bad, Kurt thinks – or maybe it’s not so much being alone as feeling lonely. She doesn’t make sense to herself; she doesn’t know how anyone could understand her enough to fall in love with her.)

And Blaine—Blaine won’t leave it alone. It’s all _about your audition_ , and _Kurt, the Warblers_. She keeps pushing and pushing and pushing until Kurt is beyond telling her to stop.

(How bad is it, though, that all she can think as she chokes down on the feelings on alienation and displacement is _it could be worse._ It could be far much worse. She doesn’t know what she hates more, and she doesn’t know which two options she’s picking between. She’s just so _lost_.)

Nicki is – Kurt wasn’t built for room-sharing. Nicki is lovely, and, well, _nice_ and sort of genuine, but Kurt isn’t used to the sound of someone else breathing as she tries to sleep. She isn’t used to the fact that each step she makes is stepping on someone else’s metaphorical toes. At Dalton she doesn’t have somewhere that’s hers, and it’s enough to drive her insane.

(Dalton is better than McKinley, but somehow, it doesn’t manage to be _good_.)

\--

Kurt doesn’t go to the guidance counsellor at lunch.

She doesn’t even feel guilty about it.

\--

That evening, Kurt finally hits breaking point. Breaking point just happens to come in the form of a differential equation.

_A differential equation._

In reality, it’s less because of a differential equation, and more because of a disastrous combination of stress, sleep deprivation, and discomfort, but, hey, she’s writing this tale. She can take liberties when she wants.

It is a truly pathetic scene that Blaine arrives to when she comes to find Kurt for dinner – Kurt bent over her math textbook, _sobbing_ – and to her credit, she doesn’t ever mention it again. Blaine just pulls up a chair next to Kurt and wraps a comforting arm around her.

Kurt has to explain to Blaine in halting words why she’s so messed up over _math_ – Blaine says the word with humour, all, “I can understand really, but you scored ninety-eight on your last math test without so much as opening your textbook to study.” – about how math is supposed to always make sense, no matter where you go. Because Kurt is _good_ at math, always has been. Spanish is confusing, geography eludes her, but _math makes sense._

And she’s been staring at the equation on the page for half an hour and she still doesn’t know what the numbers want her to do.

Blaine gives Kurt an inscrutable look before she reaches over and flips the textbook shut.

“Hey,” Kurt says, eyes widening. “I need to finish that, Blaine—”

Blaine rolls her eyes. The expression looks odd on her, like she’s stolen it from someone else’s face. “What you need is sleep, blockhead,” she says. “Seriously, you look like someone has punched you in both your eyes, and that’s _with_ the cover-up make-up I know you’re wearing.”

“Blaine—”

“Leave calculus for a moment, Kurt,” Blaine says, already packing up Kurt’s things. “You’ve been here for two hours already. I can promise you that it’ll make more sense in the morning.” She hands Kurt her school-bag, filled to the brim with textbooks and notepads.

Kurt reluctantly takes the bag.

Blaine places two hands on her shoulders and steers her out of the library.

\--

Kurt sleeps a full night for the first time in two weeks. She very determinedly does not think about why this might be.

\--

Thursday

The slip arrives during last period English, handed over to the teacher by an overly nervous freshman. The girl trembles in the doorway as the teacher reads it, then nods, the dismisses her. Dr Jenkins turns his eyes over the class, eventually settling his gaze on Kurt.

“Dr Garnett wants to see you, Kurt,” he tells her. “When you get there can you remind her that appointments are supposed to take place _out_ of lesson time?”

He gives her an expectant look. Kurt sighs and gathers up her stuff, shoving it all haphazardly into her bag.

“Prep will be to finish annotating the chapter,” Dr Jenkins informs her as she leaves. “Due Monday.”

Kurt nods, then leaves.

\--

Dr Garnett is insufferably smug when Kurt turns up to see her. She gives Kurt a smile with a strong undercurrent of _I win_ , and invites Kurt to take a seat.

“My time is valuable, Kurt,” she says. “It would probably be best for both of us that you learn now that avoiding appointments with me won’t help. I am in a position of power, a position to help, and I am _not afraid to use it_.”

_I don’t need your permission, Kurt._ Kurt swallows back words and bile.

Dr Garnett smiles again, this time pointedly. “I’ll see you on Friday.”

\--

Kurt leaves the counsellor’s office and promptly loses the contents of her stomach in the nearest toilet. She wishes she could say that the tension bleeds out of her afterwards, but it just seems to settle, low and deep in the pit of her stomach.

Her joints are shaking as she makes her way back to her room, ready to drown herself in her duvet, and relish in the silence. She pushes the door open a crack.

Sat on Nicki’s bed, watching anime on a laptop, are Nicki and another girl – this one with brilliant red hair. Kurt pauses, watching them, before she makes a fanfare of entering the room and digging through her drawers for her running shorts.

She’s going to run until the shaking stops, she decides.

\--

Kurt works up a thick coating of sweat during her run, but she feels exponentially better afterwards. She thinks it’s maybe because there was no-one else there when she ran, just her and the ground, and being able to focus slowly on the shocks travelling up her legs was a welcome respite.

She stops by her dorm afterwards to pick up a towel, then makes her way to one of the free shower rooms. She shuts herself in, and turns the temperature up on the shower, right up until it is scalding against her skin, and then she steps under the spray.

She doesn’t mean to sing.

Kurt’s favourite movie has always been _Mulan_ , right from the moment her mother first sat her down in front of the TV and pushed the VHS tap into the player. She knows the whole thing by heart now, can quote the characters and scenes verbatim, and now, she can’t stop the words from working their way up her wind-pipe and out of her mouth.

“ _Let’s get down to business_ ,” Kurt belts into her shampoo bottle, “ _to defeat the Huns_!”

Singing in the shower is so cliché. Seriously, Kurt thinks, not one, but two of New Directions’ male soloists have been discovered that way, but honestly … Kurt learned to love shower singing from her mom. Kurt can remember sitting outside her parents’ bathroom, and listening to Mom cycle through every Bananarama song known to man, and when her mother emerged in a cloud of steam and perfume, she’d smiled.

“The water on my shower cap sounds like applause,” she’d confessed to Kurt.

It stuck with her.

Kurt rounds the chorus, feeling her spirits rise and she pushes her voice to a crescendo. “ _We must be swift as a coursing river_ —”

“Now why didn’t you sing like that in your audition?”

Kurt screams.

She whips her arms across her body, hoping to preserve the tattered shreds of her dignity, as a girl with a shock of blonde hair – wrapped in a navy-blue Dalton towel – grins at her.

“I’m _naked_ ,” Kurt shrieks. “Get out, get out, get out!”

The blonde-haired girl blinks at Kurt as if realising for the first time that there are far fewer clothes involved in this encounter than normally considered socially acceptable. “Oh,” she says, then pulls off her towel. “Here.”

Kurt is too shell-shocked to do anything other than accept the towel, leaving the other girl stood shamelessly in her underwear.

“I’m Jess,” she says. “Jess Sterling. You’re Kurt, right?”

“Yes,” Kurt says, because, honestly, what else can she say?

“You’re totally getting on the Warblers,” Jess says. Then, in complete contrast to the previous string of conversation says, “Do you like this bra? I’m thinking it’s a bit too racy for me, right?”

Kurt keeps her eyes very firmly on Jess’s face. “I’m not going to answer that question,” she says. “And what do you mean, the Warblers?”

Jess shrugs carelessly. “I have more than enough dirt on the council to push this through. Also, we need at least another member by the end of the semester if we want our funding bumped up into the next bracket, and _man_ , you can sing. Has anyone ever told you that you sound like that woman from that Disney musical – the one with the ice?”

“How is it that you somehow manage to say _everything_ and yet make no sense?” Kurt muses.

Jess grins. “It’s a gift. Now, I’ve just realised that I’m actually stood here chatting to you in my bra and girl-shorts, and it’s actually pretty cold in here, so I’m going to abscond. Keep the towel!”

With that, Jess ducks out of the tiny shower-room, but not without poking her head back around and saying, “Next time, Kurt, I’d lock the door.”

Kurt is left feeling like she’s just survived a natural disaster.

\--

Friday

“So, Kurt,” Dr Garnett says. “How are you today?”

Kurt smiles a fake smile. It’s just like drama club, Kurt, she tells herself. Play a part. “Fine,” she says breezily.

Dr Garnett quirks an eyebrow, but says nothing. “So, if you’d actually turned up on Wednesday, we’d have already done this, but I need to run through some of Dalton’s policies with you. Firstly, I’d like to tell you that the administration are well aware of what a struggle it can be to adjust to Dalton’s workload and environment, so it’s perfectly normal to feel overwhelmed.”

Kurt smiles again.

Dr Garnett moves through it all like she’s said it a thousand times before – she probably has, Kurt realises – pointing out resources saved to Dalton’s internal servers, and explaining the finer points of Dalton’s Honour Code. (And yes, it appears the capital letters are quite necessary.)

About halfway through the meeting, Dr Garnett hands over a sheet of paper. Kurt takes it, confused.

“That’s a list of all of Dalton’s available extra-curriculars,” Dr Garnett explains. “All Dalton students are required to have two fixed extra-curriculars per week, minimum, one of which should be a sporting activity. Do you have any immediate preferences?”

Kurt ends up picking soccer for her sporting activity (because the only part of American football she was ever good at was kicking the ball) and says she’ll try out for gospel choir (because it’s the only singing extra-curricular that still holds auditions this late in the term.)

She isn’t sure which one she’s least enthusiastic about.

At the end of the meeting, Dr Garnett asks her if there’s anything she would like to talk about, and Kurt surprises herself with her honesty.

“Not with you,” she says, and leaves.

\--

Jess is waiting for Kurt back at her dorm room, posed dramatically in the half-dark, and swivelling round on a chair, all, “I’ve been expecting you, Ms Hummel.”

Nicki pushes past Kurt into the room and gives Jess a friendly eye-roll. “Can we not?” she asks. “You’re enough of a supervillain as it is.”

Jess shrugs. “All the best characters are,” she says.

Nicki is unconvinced. “Black Widow.”

“Exception that proves the rule,” Jess dismisses, turning back to Kurt. “You’re just as hot as I remember,” she says, then frowns. “Though less naked. Not sure if it’s an improvement.”

Nicki throws a pillow at Jess. Jess dodges it easily.

“Anyway,” Jess says. “I’m just dropping by to tell you that you have been successful in achieving a place on the Warblers, and that you should report for your first rehearsal this evening in Room 601, in the music department.”

Kurt gapes. “But I—” she starts to say, tugging down on her skirt nervously.

“No buts,” Jess cuts across her. “I snuck Thalia’s boyfriend out of her dorm once, and don’t even get me started on all the shit I have on Wes and Davina – God, the things they do when drunk. Remind me to tell you some stories sometime—”

Nicki clears her throat.

Jess has the good sense to look somewhat abashed. “Right,” she says. “So that’s that. So, uh, see you at practice.”

And just like that, Jess is pushing up from the chair, ruffling Nicki’s hair and sweeping out the room in such a manner that makes Kurt feel like she should have been wearing a cape. Supervillain, indeed.

Nicki gives Kurt a tired smile. “My best friend, Ladies,” she announces.

Kurt feels a pang of sympathy for her.

\--

There’s a knock at the door.

Kurt looks up from her worn copy of _The Lord of the Flies_ – they studied this back at McKinley, which is an advantage she most definitely needs here – and across the empty dorm room. Nicki left about fifteen minutes ago after receiving a text from Jess, and mumbling something about _stupid girls and their obsession with fire_. She’s _really_ quite satisfied not knowing.

Kurt places her book down on her bedside table and shuffles across the room. She opens the door to a head of thick black curls and a perfect smile.

“Hey, you,” Blaine says. “Can I come in?”

Kurt wordlessly pushes the door back the full way and steps aside. Blaine enters the room with a wide-eyed fascination, as if she’s stepping into a new world.

“I love this,” Blaine murmurs. “How do you manage to make everything so … _you_?”

Kurt feels a flush working its way up her cheeks. “It’s not much,” she mumbles. “Just, posters and things.”

“I have posters and things,” Blaine counters, “and yet my room still manages to look like a movie-set cliché.” She shakes her head, smiling. “So, I heard on the grapevine that you told the guidance counsellor to fuck off.”

Kurt smiles wryly. “Not in so many words.” She sighs. “She wasn’t helping.”

Blaine shrugs. “Fair enough,” she says. Then: “Did she know about—” Blaine makes an aborted gesture with her hand, which could be anything from _peace_ to _let’s bang_.

It makes Kurt want to laugh. “No,” Kurt says. “And who on earth taught you sign language?”

“Google,” Blaine answers without missing a beat. “So, I have some presents for you, now that you’ve gone your first week as a Dalton Girl.”

“Is one of them a pony?” Kurt asks.

Blaine laughs at that. “Next time, maybe,” she says. “No, the first one is a pair of these.”

Something is thrust into Kurt’s hands and she looks down to see a … pair of cycling shorts?

“We’re allowed to wear them under the uniform,” Blaine explains. “I noticed you kept pulling your kilt, and I thought you probably weren’t used to wearing skirts. So, I, uh, thought they might help.”

Kurt knows she shouldn’t feel like this. They’re just shorts – they probably cost Blaine, what? Ten bucks, tops? But – _she noticed._

“As for the second gift,” Blaine goes on. “You’re going to need to come with me.”

\--

Blaine leads her through a tangle of corridors, dragging her through doors like she’s wandered these halls her entire life. They climb staircases, and squeeze through past filing cabinets, until Blaine is helping her climb out of a small window onto a fire-escape, three storeys above the ground.

“What’s this for?” Kurt asks.

“An escape,” Blaine answers.

And Kurt thinks, right there and then, _Oh._

_Oh_ , she thinks, _this is how I fall in love with you._

\--

**III  
Rather screw each other than screw you.**

Kurt is so, so, so hung-over.

She is hung-over to the point that not even the vast quantities of ibuprofen she practically _inhaled_ this morning can do anything for her throbbing headache. Last night is still arriving in bits and pieces in her mind, but what she can remember … isn’t pretty.

Jess slams her history textbook down onto the desk next to her and the sound from it feels like someone is pounding a hammer against her skull.

Kurt wants to _die._

“Hey, you look like shit,” comes the cheery commentary from Jess. “Rough weekend?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Kurt mumbles into her arms. She’s trying to block the majority of the light out of her line of vision, but it’s not really working. “I feel like there’s road kill in my _mouth._ ”

“What even did you _do_ last night?” Jess asks, peering innocently at her. “You’re not an alcoholic, are you? Because you’re _way_ too young for that sort of thing.”

Kurt grimaces. “No,” she says. “Not an alcoholic. I suspect they have better alcohol tolerances.”

“Well, then, did you fight off a zombie apocalypse, then?” Jess presses. “That’s the only other reason I can think of why you’d look so … dead.”

“Not exactly,” Kurt says.

\--

_Kurt should probably think long and hard over all of the life choices that brought her to this moment, and try to pinpoint when it all went wrong._

_This moment, as it so happens, is her chugging a large glass of—actually, she’s not entirely sure, but it’s definitely alcoholic, to the cheers of her ex-classmates. It’s probably a special kind of irony that Rachel decided to throw this shindig on the weekend before the start of Alcohol Awareness Week, but Kurt’s too busy getting absolutely shitfaced to care._

_As she drains the last bit of alcohol from her glass, and the room around her erupts in cheers, Kurt has the somewhat dull realisation that this is what it feels like to fit in. She wonders why she didn’t start drinking earlier._

\--

The main consequence of last night becomes evident far too soon, and everyone at Dalton is quick to make their opinions on the matter known.

“Did Blaine just blank you?” Nicki asks her, mouth agape at their lunch table. “Is the world ending?”

“Okay, Blaine told me to be your lab partner this afternoon, because you’re not speaking,” Davina tells her in the break between fifth and sixth period. “Do I need to bash some skulls in?”

“Oh my God, _lesbians_ ,” mutters Thalia during Warbler practice when Blaine moves so that she’s not sat next to Kurt.

And Kurt – well, Kurt has a throbbing headache, and no longer has a best friend. It’s a pretty shitty trade-off, she thinks, and she doesn’t know why she picked it.

Then she remembers.

_She made out with Finn._

Oh God, someone take control of her life away from her.

\--

_“She’s my sister!” Finn cries in repulsion, staring at the bottle like it’s betrayed him. “Seriously, you can’t expect me to kiss Kurt.”_

_Santana shrugs, the movement jolting Brittany, who’s spread across the other girl’s lap, shirtless. Kurt is making a conscious decision not to stare at either of them._

_“You’re not related,” Santana says. “No paternity test, no incest.”_

_“This is so messed up, seriously—”_

_Around about then, Kurt gets tired of listening to his complaints, so she leans across and kisses him. It’s meant to be a short kiss, honestly, and Kurt would be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about it – especially during her attempts to straighten herself out – but it kind of gets … out of control._

_Kurt doesn’t have many markers with which to grade this kiss, but it’s pretty clear that Finn knows what he’s doing. And, well, a pair of lips is a pair of lips, and Finn hasn’t been drinking, so he actually tastes kind of pleasant—_

_“Okay, okay,” Quinn interrupts, levering in between the two of them. “I think we’ve had quite enough of that.”_

\--

“Rachel,” Kurt says as she picks at the pastry in front of her. “ _Please_ tell me I heard that wrong.”

Rachel frowns at Kurt, delicately stirring her latte. “What’s so bad about it, Kurt?” she asks. “It’s just a date, and Blaine was the one who asked me – and I’m not even sure why you think this is any of your business, actually?”

They’re out at the Lima Bean, Kurt for the most part over her hangover. It’s a fabulous distraction from the Blaine mess, at least it was until Rachel dropped her upcoming date with Blaine into the conversation.

“Blaine’s my friend,” Kurt retorts, “and you’re leading her on. That kind of makes it my business.”

“I’m not leading Blaine on,” Rachel replies.

“You’re straight,” Kurt says flatly.

“I might not be! I could be – what’s that thing where you like both? – bisexual, right?” Rachel shrugs. “Why are you so against this, Kurt? I thought you’d be all for experimenting to find out who you are.”

“Blaine deserves more than to be your experiment, Rachel,” Kurt says coolly. “Does she even know that that’s what this is to you?”

Rachel rolls her eyes at that. Kurt’s knuckles turn white on the edge of the table.

“Being gay isn’t some _fashion trend_ ,” she grits out. “You don’t have to have some cool lesbian encounter for you to be a modern woman. And being confused about your sexuality doesn’t eliminate the fact that what you’re doing is _utterly_ shitty—”

“Kurt,” Rachel interrupts. “If I wanted a lecture, I would have gone to someone I respected.”

Kurt—doesn’t know what to say to that. So she doesn’t say anything.

\--

_It would probably be hilarious if anything about this was funny to Kurt._

_Blaine – totally sober, Blaine – is currently reluctantly engaged in a somewhat risqué performance of_ Don’t You Want Me Baby, _singing side-by-side with Rachel. Rachel leers and shimmies, drunk enough that she actually misses some of the notes, and Blaine ducks and dodges, dancing a tactful game of evasion._

_The song comes to a stumbling stop and Rachel makes for a crowd-dive, except, well, there’s no crowd. Santana is secluded in a corner, licking salt of Brittany’s stomach – and action that makes both more and less sense with the memory of Kurt walking in on them – and Mike and Tina are doing something that looks dangerously close to kinky. Artie is slumped in his chair and snoring, and Puck is crying into a bottle of vodka._

_Finn catches Rachel before she can crack her head on anything, and she giggles haphazardly in his arms._

_“You know what’s great?” she asks, twisting in Finn’s grip so that she’s looking at Kurt. “You’re a lesbian. Blaine’s a lesbian. EVERYONE’S A LESBIAN!”_

_Puck perks up from his bottle of vodka at the word ‘lesbian’._

_Kurt smiles through gritted teeth. At the start of the party, Puck had made on of his usual comments – something about double the breasts – and before Kurt could garrotte him with some stray wire, Rachel had jumped in with, “Actually I read this really interesting article about how single-sex schooling could potentially give your child homosexual tendencies due to their inability to connect emotionally to the opposite gender.”_

_Kurt’s response had been there, waiting on the tip of her tongue, especially as Puck’s entire visage had brightened at Rachel’s words, but Blaine placed a hand on her shoulder._

_“I wouldn’t be so excited if I were you, Noah,” Blaine had said calmly. “It just means that we’d rather screw each other than screw you.”_

_Now, Blaine approaches Rachel carefully. “I think we need to get some water in you,” she says._

_Rachel smiles beatifically up at Blaine, then, as the other girl leans in to help Finn, surges upwards and presses their lips together in a kiss._

\--

“You and Blaine need to sort your shit out,” Nicki says bluntly. “You two are like Captain America and Iron Man – when you don’t get on, we end up with Civil War.”

“I only understood about one word in five there,” Kurt tells her. She drops her school bag down by her desk and pulls out her math textbook. “And it’s no one’s business but mine and Blaine’s.”

“That may be true,” Nicki allows, “but it affects my life too. It’s only a matter of time before we’re forced to pick sides, and I am not here for any of that shit. Sort it out.”

Kurt shakes her head. “It’s kind of irrevocably fucked up,” she says. “Irreversible.”

“Well then find the right catalyst,” Nicki says.

“It’s not that simple.”

\--

_Rachel smiles beatifically up at Blaine, then, as the other girl leans in to help Finn, surges upwards and presses their lips together in a kiss._

_Finn drops her, but Rachel manages to land on her feet, and she drinks Blaine in._

_Kurt… Kurt can’t stand to look at this._

_She turns to Quinn with a confidence she doesn’t feel. “So you’re taking a break from boys,” she says._

_Quinn nods._

_“That doesn’t include girls, right?”_

_Quinn is just drunk enough to nod again. So, Kurt kisses her. And kisses her. And kisses her._

\--

Kurt and Blaine make it two days without speaking to each other. They probably would have made it longer if not for the fact that Jess corners them at dinner and threatens to lock them in a closet if they don’t ‘stop perpetuating this self-flagellation and pointless grudge-holding.’

They stare at each other stonily for a while, before Blaine – because she’s the bigger person, because she’s more capable of forgiveness than Kurt – breaks it and says, “This sucks.”

Kurt is caught between wanting to laugh and cry. “Yeah,” she agrees. “Really sucks.”

“I miss my best friend,” Blaine says. “And I’m sick of being pissed at you.”

“Ditto,” Kurt says, and suddenly she is so, so fucking relieved.

They never say it in words, never articulate why they were so angry with each other, but Kurt thinks that’s mostly because they both know.

At that point Jess claps them both on the shoulder. “Fabulous,” she says. “Now, _kiss_.”

Blaine and Kurt give her equally disturbed looks.

Jess rolls her eyes. “I never had Barbies growing up, give me a break.” She pushes past them. “Now, I have to go and teach Nicki how to hogtie a man in six seconds flat. See you two later.”

After they watch her go, Kurt turns back to Blaine. “So,” she says, voice falsely light. “I hear you have a date.”

\--

Blaine breaks it off with Rachel after one date. Kurt, in a sudden pique of friendliness texts Rachel her condolences and even manages not to sound gloating.

She gets back a, _are you kidding? song writing gold kurt!_ that falls a bit flat.

When she tells Nicki and Jess, though, Jess grins and holds out her hand for Nicki to slap fifty bucks into.

Jess sucks.

(“Only if they’re cute,” Jess says, and then grins at the disgusted look on Kurt’s face.)

\--

Valentine’s Day at Dalton goes like this: one well-intentioned serenade turned most hilarious miscommunication episode _ever_ , two break-ups, and three decidedly gory horror movies at the Warbler’s ‘Girls Only Because We Do Solidarity Here, Who The Fuck Was This Valentine Dude Anyway, Seriously, I Find Myself Picturing Gilderoy Lockhart And I Have No Idea Why’ Valentine’s Movie Night Extravaganza.

(No, really, that is the official title. As of now, Jess is forbidden from designing the posters for any and all social events.)

\--

Kurt is very pleasantly surprised by the Valentine’s Day serenade that Blaine organises, especially because she had previously been convinced that Blaine’s mysterious friend, Jay, was in fact, a) a girl, b) much hotter than she is and c) soon to be Blaine’s new luv-ah.

Kurt is wrong on all accounts.

It goes pretty much like this:

On the day before Valentine’s Day, Blaine asks Kurt if she thinks it’s okay to serenade a single friend on Valentine’s Day to cheer them up. Kurt, who comes from the New Directions school of thinking – in that singing is the answer to _everything_ , and the only reason that musicians haven’t sorted world peace out is that they can’t find the right song – says yes.

That afternoon, Blaine rouses the Warblers with a moving speech about courage and possibly the Romans – Kurt wasn’t really paying attention at this point – and persuades them to aid her in her quest to cheer up Jay. Kurt then realises that Jay is probably female, hotter than she is, and soon to be Blaine’s new luv-ah.

The next day, the Warblers rock up to the Gap in Columbus and serenade Jay, who turns out to be a _guy_ with kind of tragic hair, and also – and this is the part that Kurt finds hilarious – very, very, thoroughly and utterly _homosexual._

Jeremiah blushes his way through a coming out speech to Blaine, all _I thought you knew_ , and _I didn’t mean to lead you on_ , then returns to his shift, leaving Blaine on the sidewalk, and Kurt trying not to laugh.

Blaine turns on her heel. “Okay, I’m giving you thirty seconds to laugh at me.”

Kurt laughs.

\--

The break-ups are worse than that. Kurt walks in on Thalia cutting up pictures of her boyfriend angrily at lunch, and then has to listen to a forty-five minute rant on ‘the bastard Pete’ and ‘that skank Lisa’ before she can escape, using class as an excuse.

Kurt becomes aware of the second break-up in chemistry when their teacher tells them all too cheerily that they’re going to be doing electrolysis that day – with his wedding ring as the anode. Apparently his wife left him for a younger man, or something, and he’s in the mood for some bitter chemistry? Kurt doesn’t really pay that much attention, but Blaine stays after class to make sure Dr Hansen is alright.

As she leaves, she can hear Dr Hansen laughing, so Kurt guesses that Blaine told him the GAP Attack story.

She smiles to herself.

\--

Kurt is probably going to be unable to sleep for a week after this.

It’s—good, though. It’s good.

Kurt spends the evening sandwiched between Blaine and Wes, occasionally being showered in stray bits of popcorn as the other two girls throw snacks at each other, and at times crushing Wes’s hand in a death-grip, because _holy fuck why are they watching this?_

At the end of the evening, when they’re clearing up the mess from the rec room, and getting ready to head to bed, Blaine hands over a box of something to Kurt. Kurt blinks, taking the box numbly.

“I know you think Valentine’s Day is needlessly commercialised,” Blaine explains, shrugging, “but Happy Valentine’s Day, anyway.”

Kurt frowns at Blaine, but she opens the box and…

It’s a framed photo, of the two of them, taken a while back, when the Warblers had been travelling to one of their performances at a nursing home. On the way back, Kurt and Blaine had sat next to each other, and in this photo, they’re leaning in, talking to each other in hushed whispers.

Across the bottom, in bold font, is written, ‘KLAINE ARE JUDGING YOU.’

“Jess made it,” Blaine explains.

Kurt rolls her eyes. “Of course she did.”

\--

She puts the photo on her nightstand. Nicki wisely doesn’t comment.

\--

When Sue Sylvester tells Kurt and Blaine that the key to defeating the New Directions at Regionals is sex-appeal, Blaine laughs until her stomach hurts. “Oh my God,” she rasps. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all week.”

Kurt raises her eyebrows at that.

“Last year the judges _complained_ to our headmistress because our uniforms were too sexualised,” Blaine explains. “Dr Mercer was having none of it – wrote them a two page letter on sexualisation of female innocence and virginity in the media. It was _glorious_.”

“Dr Mercer kicks ass,” Kurt agrees.

“Just – can you imagine their faces if we turned up dressed like the cast of _Cabaret_?” Blaine asks, before she dissolves into sniggers again. “Oh my God.”

Kurt nods and takes a silent sip of her mocha.

\--

Kurt has her arms wrapped around her knees, and is staring out over Dalton’s grounds. She loves it up here on the fire-escape, separate from everything, and blissfully quiet. Behind her, the small window opens and Blaine climbs out, settling beside Kurt without so much as a word.

Then, she speaks. “Thalia was out of line.”

Kurt exhales heavily. “Thalia was also wrong,” she replies. “Not a virgin.”

Blaine’s left eyebrow quirks. “Virginity is a social construct,” she says. “It doesn’t matter one bit what you are.” She frowns. “Unless you’re a murder, in which case I’m going to be leaving the fire escape before you can push me off it.”

Kurt snorts. “You’re rambling again,” she says.

Blaine flushes lightly. “Sorry.”

“Look, I get what Thalia meant to say,” Kurt admits, “about there being merit in sex appeal, but it’s not the way to go about this.”

“Thalia,” Blaine repeats, “was out of line.”

The words rattle between them. _Jesus, Kurt. Don’t be such a frigid virgin._

Blaine takes a deep breath. “I would have never told them about meeting your cheerleading coach if I knew they were going to react like this,” she says. “I’m going to be taking this to Dr Mercer – we have a zero tolerance policy for a reason.”

“Blaine,” Kurt says. “Just, forget it.”

They fall into silence.

“It was a boy, you know,” Kurt says finally. “The person I had sex with. Male. It was…” She trails off. “I wish I’d met you sooner.”

Blaine snorts. “What, so that you could have sexed me up instead?”

“So you could have told me that I didn’t owe anybody anything for saying no.”

Blaine shakes her head and presses closer to Kurt. “It doesn’t make you any less of a person for thinking you did.” She sighs. “The look on Thalia’s face when you slapped her, though. I swear, I have never wanted to kiss you so much as I did then.”

A beat passes.

“I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

“Kind of, yeah,” Kurt breathes. “So, uh, why didn’t you?”

“Kiss you?” Blaine shrugs. “A couple of reasons. Partly because I know that Jess is running a betting pool and I want her to lose as much money as possible, and also because I… You’re a bit out of my league, Kurt.”

“I’m out of your league?” Kurt chokes out in shock.

“Um, yeah?” Blaine replies. “I mean, your friendship group looks like the cast of a primetime show, and you proved quite easily that you could have _any_ of them that you wanted—”

“Oh my God, this is because I made out with _Quinn_?”

“—And then there’s just me,” Blaine finishes. “Your GBF.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Kurt says, and she twists so that she’s facing Blaine. “Blaine, you’re being needlessly insecure. You’re—I’m going to kiss you now, if that’s okay with you?”

Blaine blinks once, twice, and then nods.

Kurt takes her time, reaching towards Blaine and tucking a strand of her curly hair away. She fits her hand to the side of Blaine’s head and leans in until she can feel the other girl’s breath on her face. She takes it all in and then…

\--

In another world, Blaine kisses Kurt for the first time over a jewelled casket. In another world, Blaine falls in love with a beautiful boy singing and crying.

But this isn’t another world.

Instead, Kurt kisses Blaine. Instead, they break apart and laugh. Instead, Blaine falls in love with Kurt in everything that she is, in anger and in spite, in tragedy and sadness, in cutting humour and unguarded laughter.

\--

(Jess wins the betting pool.)

**Author's Note:**

> Detailed Warnings:
> 
> **Forced Outing**  
>  Karofsky asks Kurt out on a date – she declines to do so, citing that she is a lesbian as her reason. In response, Karofsky spreads this fact around school.
> 
> **Sexual Assault**  
>  During a meeting in a coffee shop, Karofsky kisses Kurt. This happens after her being outed at school. She pours scalding coffee over him when he tries to kiss her again.
> 
> **Sexual Harassment**  
>  Kurt receives multiple unwarranted offers for threesomes, and several from Puck. She does not feel comfortable with any of this.
> 
> **Allusions to threats of sexual violence**  
>  Kurt mentions an encounter she had with Karofsky, in which Karofsky states that he does not need her permission, and that she is beautiful. Kurt flashbacks to these two phrases at multiple times during the story, mostly triggered by mentions of her time at McKinley, or phrases similar in structure or sentiment.


End file.
